


An Exercise In Futility

by sirius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:51:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirius/pseuds/sirius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the BFF, because the best present for one's birthday is clearly Malfoycest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Exercise In Futility

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prongs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prongs/gifts).



> This fic was written in 2006. It contains incest, triggering sexual content and explicit sexual activity.

_Everything is a path lit by feeling, so tight and blazing that Draco cannot open his eyes. The world is black but it feels and it breathes – it groans, flexes, rocks, gasps. It is hard and rough. It is silk against his bare back; it is the sheets rough against his knees. It is this godforsaken Gryffindor Tower that Draco hates. It is scratches and biting kisses. When Harry's chin cracks against Draco's temple, Draco opens his eyes and snarls at him and it is in that moment that he sees his own hands, yanking Harry's hair back from his forehead. His thumbnail is scratching Harry's scar faint pink with every thrust and there's something kinky about it – perhaps Voldemort can sense this, this raw sexuality, the thrill of a connection forged by hatred. Perhaps Voldemort would approve of this – this petit mort. When he comes, Draco presses his hand against it and the sense of power electrifies him._

_He knows, then, that he's going to be a Death Eater. When Harry's cloak slips from his shoulders, he knows that he's going to be in big trouble._

 

Futility, Draco realises, should have been his middle name. Come to think of it, he's not so sure that it secretly isn't – but this isn't the moment to ask. Draco isn't sure what this is the moment _for_ ; running and screaming, perhaps, in a normal family. This isn't a normal family, though, and Draco's back to feeling that whatever he does is futile. He remains motionless and trembling like a bowstring pulled taut, bearing the cold front of his father's temper. He'd blame Potter, but he always blames Potter and he hates to be predictable. Besides of which, _he_ sought out Potter – not that he tells his father this, of course - and Draco rarely duels with denial. 

“I wanted it,” he chokes out. “It wasn't an accident – he didn't just...it wasn't all him. I went to see him. I...didn't ask for it, but it just happened.”

Lucius' eyes get that glaze that makes them look almost silver with fury and Draco considers that he should have made up a story of some sort; involving magic or parseltongue or half-blood idiotic recklessness. Harry is everything that Lucius hates, after all; he would have been placated by the thought that Potter had stupidly assumed himself worthy of his son. But Draco had willingly lowered himself to the level of a dirty Gryffindor and Lucius wasn't likely to tolerate _that_. Draco winced and considered this the culmination of a month of futile pleading. He had begged McGonagall not to owl his father; _begged_ , in a way that shamed the Malfoy blood in his veins. He hadn't been satisfied that she was equally as reluctant to pass on the details. She had, after all, harped on about rules; the pair of them being minors; that it had been in _public_ (Harry hadn't managed to convince her about the invisibility cloak) and that both their guardians should be made aware of their actions. If that hadn't been frustrating enough, Snape had singularly blamed Draco for ruining his one chance to glower over Harry by being involved in his sordid downfall, and Snape did not forgive lightly. Draco seemed to be last on his favourite teacher's Christmas card list – and he didn't think his chances of regaining his father's favour were much higher. 

“Father, I...I know I was stupid; I know I've embarrassed you, but it was a mistake. It won't happen again. I've learnt my lesson now, and I won't...ever even look at him again, if you think it best.” 

“You have learnt nothing.” Lucius' voice is cold. “Otherwise, you would not have done it in the first place. Potter, of all people. I'm not even going to start on the fact that Potter is a _boy_ , as you well know, but you might have picked a Slytherin at the very least – I might have been able to convert your stupidity into flattery had it been Crabbe or Goyle, even that Zabini boy, but _Potter_? Sometimes I wholly believe you do these things purely to distress me. There can be no other explanation.”

This genuinely wounds Draco, whose hormones and lack of judgement take nothing away from the admiration he holds for his father. “No, please, father, that isn't it. I just – it was wrong, and I...didn't think, I...I'm not you, yet, and I-”

“Don't flatter yourself, or me. It means nothing from you right now.” Lucius picks up his fork once more and glances coolly over the table at Draco. The servants and the house elf make hurriedly for the kitchens, and Draco is left with the dilemma of whether to sit and eat or run away without. Fasting would have absolutely no effect on his father; it is Narcissa who cannot bear her only son going without food. Were he to refuse the meal, his father would only condemn his pathetic obstinacy and punish him with hunger. How _futile_. With a slight pause, Draco pulls out the chair opposite his father and sinks silently into it. His fingers are just curving around his fork when his father continues:

“Stand.”

Draco doesn't understand. He rises unsteadily to his feet. Lucius stalks over to him with all the modesty of a leopard and Draco has to force his limbs not to cower. It isn't that his father frightens him, exactly – it's pure evolutionary logic. Lucius is taller, bigger, more powerful, more intelligent. Lucius is everything Draco will be, but isn't yet; the promise is frighteningly distant. Draco is always disappointing the person he most wants to impress and this makes him nervous, too. It doesn't unnerve him the way it does Narcissa that Lucius' hand has been responsible for countless deaths but it bothers him that he knows so much more than Draco does and has no qualms about reminding him of it. Around Lucius, Draco feels six inches tall. Sometimes, on the very good days, he can feel twenty feet high – but mostly he's very small, very young, very stupid. He swallows hard and wishes he were swallowing food; that his father were insulting him from across the table. Lucius' face is pure malevolence. It is unbridled anger. It is Not Good and Draco has no escape route open to him. It is all futile. And so he stands, waiting, wanting to close his eyes against it all. 

“You have embarrassed me. Embarrassed all that stands proudly in this family. You have shamed us all.”

“I'm sorry, father, I-”

“What does embarrassment feel like, Draco?”

An odd question. Draco thinks back to a moment on the Hogwarts grounds; of offering his friendship to a boy who would not take it, and shakes his head. “It's...it's not nice, it's...not something for this family, it's...”

“Not good enough. Embarrassment is something that you cannot vocalise. It is a feeling. It is the very worst feeling. You have humiliated me. You do not understand the gravity of what you have done and mere words will not help me to punish you. I wish you to feel what humiliation feels like. You whored yourself out to that boy, Draco. This is a pure house. This is a house of clean blood; of proud heritage, of upstanding and class. You have dirtied it. You are dirty. Perhaps you have tried to tell yourself otherwise.”

“I am sorry for what I have done.”

“You will be sorrier,” Lucius says ominously, and his hands move to Draco's robes. 

Draco's first thought is to scan through all the spells he knows. He is twitchy about people touching him; doesn't like public affection, doesn't like other people's hands, doesn't know where they've been. But this is his _father_ and somehow none of the rules apply; Draco has nothing to fall back on and he merely stares, dumbly, as his own pale skin illuminates the room. “Father – this isn't...”

“Right? No, perhaps not. Needs must. There are few ways to embarrass you, Draco, much to my chagrin. You are obsessed, if I might remind you, with a boy who despises you.”

“It's...” Draco is lost for words as Lucius' nails scratch over his shoulders, lifting the heavy black fabric from them. Lucius' hands are heavy; made up of thick fingers and cold palms. Yet there is an elegance to their neat nails and their symmetry. Draco's hands look tiny and insignificant as he tries to repel the touch. “I could write lines! However many lines – whatever you want me to write...”

Lucius throws Draco's robe to the floor; starts on his underclothes. He is working faster, now, with the look in his eyes that he gets when he smells fear. Draco's jumper is hauled over his head and he wrestles with it for that last moment of resistance before everything's very cold and his body hardens to it. “We have tried writing lines. It has no effect on your behaviour. Even if you were to write, 'I must not be a whore in the house of Malfoy', the likelihood is that with one whisper of Potter's name we'd be back where we started.”

“No – that's not true – I could...I'd be ashamed of myself, father. Thoroughly ashamed.”

“You'll be ashamed now.” Lucius concludes, turning Draco around with one hand, sharp and unyielding. His hands are impersonal as they tear his trousers apart, down – and Draco scrunches his eyes then because he thinks he knows what's about to happen. “You made yourself into a whore, Draco. Now you'll act like one. Step out of your trousers.” His voice turns growlingly pleased as Draco does so without question. 

“Now sit and eat your dinner.”

It is just like Lucius, Draco thinks. Just like him. He watches him return to his seat and imagines that he can trace the thoughts in his mind; the beauty of this cavernous room, dark and black to a single point – Draco, vulnerable, exposed and humiliated. He is determined to save face; to raise his chin up as he always has – to be his father's son. Summoning all his strength, he looks his father in the eye as he picks up his fork. “I've always liked gammon; it-”

“It is not served for you.”

“Of course. I'm sorry.”

“What possessed you to do it, Draco?”

“I...wanted to.”

“Wanted to disgrace your family?”

“No – it was impulsive, and...stupid, but I wanted it. It wasn't something I really thought about. It just happened. There wasn't a reason. It was just...reckless.”

“Gryffindors.” Lucius' tone suggests that Draco is inclusive in the insult and he bristles, Slytherin pride irritated.

“It won't happen again.” His voice is as cool as his father's as he swallows down his food; food that tastes of dust, flaming with hot embarrassment. He will never be able to sit and eat a family dinner again without thinking of this; the soft chair covering against his thighs, the wood curvature against his shoulderblades. It's indecent and the thought of it is enough to make his eyes burn.

“Not after tonight.” Lucius mutters quietly around his wine glass. “You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Potter's...guardians finally sling him out of the house for this.” His eyes are watchful of Draco's reaction. 

“Probably,” Draco keeps his voice indifferent, unsure how he really feels. “It'd be deserved.”

“You're lucky I haven't done the same.” 

“Yes, father.”

“Still – I'm sure this must be the last straw for them. We have our reputation to protect us – to cleanse you. They are...unfortunate,” Lucius is smirking now. “in that respect.”

Draco merely nods, wanting desperately to change the subject. He has had quite enough of thinking of Harry; it is far from an impartial topic. Naked, he doesn't want to think about the consequences. In dreams, his father cannot keep check; cannot press his thumb down upon the visions that scorch Draco's sleeping mind. In the bathroom, his father cannot invade upon the privacy secure between Draco's cock and his left hand. He cannot close his hand over the mouth that pants memories. Draco shifts in his seat uncomfortably, thinking back to McGonagall and Ron practising dances for the Yule Ball back in fourth year.

“It'd be an irony, I suppose,” Lucius continues, “were we to secure Potter's downfall via your actions. If he is to escape the charm that binds that household, well...I imagine the Dark Lord would be most pleased with you. It wouldn't take away what you've done, of course – that deformed act, but it might be of some consolation to him. It might be of great benefit to this household. Wouldn't that be a strange thing.”

“Yes,” Draco says, not really understanding a whit of what his father is saying. “I won't have anything more to do with him.”

“You will try your best, I am sure.”

“Father, I shall not see him again.”

“Your teenage hormones are weak and pathetic pliable. That is, I recall, how you ended up in this mess in the first place.”

“No – that won't be an issue. I can control myself.” Draco twists his nose into a convincing sneer. “I can't understand why I was tempted in the first place.”

“You shall be the very model of chastity, until he approaches you with some hideously voyeuristic scheme involving a hard hand and the Astronomy Tower. I know _boys_ , Draco, even if I think them inappropriate. You'd be much better with a nice girl; someone who wouldn't drag you off into a broom closet because they couldn't control their impulses.”

Draco feels his cock twitch; memories flooding back of Potter's hands, which tend towards being just a tad too hard, and his mouth – which is nothing short of wondrous; wet and soft. He almost chokes on his food and quickly gulps down a few sips of his wine. 

“I should stop talking,” Lucius purrs. “It might expose you, mightn't it?”

Draco says nothing but bites down hard on his fork; it helps. “I'm fine,” he replies, a little too quickly. In truth, he is anything but. He thinks with the energy he's exuding in fighting the memories, he could bring Voldemort back to life seven times over. It is useless; useless, because Lucius keeps talking, and with every dulcet note, another thought comes to Draco until he's harder than nails and his tongue is sore.

“I can understand that you might be tempted that way – towards the excitable roughness of your peers, rather than the more refined conversation of the female sex. You're at an age where instant gratification is on your mind. Naturally...you'd be inclined to make mistakes; to indulge in hot little trysts wherever you can. I'm sure it was most satisfying for you.”

“Father, please – this has gone far enough.” Draco can feel the soft fabric of the tablecloth against his erection and he is trying to pretend he can't.

“Quite the contrary. I was just about to add that although my understanding is vast, my tolerance is not. If it were – _anyone_ , indeed, but Potter! I think I could cope. But that boy, Draco; not only does he make Crabbe look like Dumbledore, he's dangerous. He could jeopardise everything that's in front of you, even without your hapless liaisons in closets. I cannot believe you would feel him worth _touching_ – the thought disgusts me. This,” Lucius nods downwards and the mere thought that he knows Draco is hard makes the younger boy's face redden. “disgusts me.”

“Can I be excused?”

“No, you cannot.”

“Father, I think...I have lost my appetite, and I have two sheets of parchment to do for Potions...”

“I am not done with you yet.”

“Can I put my robe back on?”

“When I have finished my wine. After which, I have a further lesson to teach you. We will be travelling through the house and I have no desire for the servants to see you in this state. You are permitted to put your robe back on then.”

Draco supposes that he should think this merciful. He sits, eyes downcast, and says nothing more; listens to his father drink the wine. The sounds are moist and dignified and they do not help. Draco shifts in his seat, trying to move the soft canopy out of the way. It breezes lightly over the head of his cock, ticklish and sensual, and sparks curl in his blood. There is only one thing more embarrassing than being erect at his father's table – and that is to be getting off on it. He frowns, hard, stares at the tapestries about the room. There is nothing arousing about them. He ignores the fabric brushing his lap. Draco Malfoy is not about to fornicate with a tablecloth. 

After Lucius sups the remainder of his wine, he leads Draco by the shoulder up the stairs. Draco is buzzing by this point, robe soft against his bare skin, eyes flaming. His father's palm on his back, the nails against his shoulder blades – they do not help, and Draco finds himself wishing he could take a detour to the bathroom. He doubts that his father will want him this aroused. He doubts that this will help his cause, anyway – his excuses about not fancying the pants off Potter, about not wanting anything to do with him. There is no cause, to his mind, that could possibly be helped by the erection within his robes that refuses to go away. As it is, he has little time to think about it as Lucius throws the door to his own bedroom open and almost tosses him inside. Draco considers briefly that this is only the fourth or fifth time that he can remember being in this room; red and wood-panelled, exquisite. Sumptuous. Sexual. The four-poster bed stands at its core, with its dark red canopies and its curling wooden beams. A throw is draped across it that tickles at Draco's left foot; black and thick, embroidered. It has an Oriental look to it; but aggressive and masculine, not at all delicate. Draco thinks it is very Lucius. Lucius does not seem to be thinking at all. He slams the door hard. He is still very angry.

“What am I to learn, father?” Draco asks, trying to placate matters. His father's hand comes down hard upon his cheek. He takes that for enough of an answer, and closes his mouth. His chin draws up and he looks at his father without tears. 

“I meant to bait you,” Lucius says, in the grand voice he reserves specially for lectures. “Downstairs. I did not intend to discover that your feelings are quite the same. I did not intend to uncover that you are quite as sullied as you were in school. I quite believed that Potter had you under some sort of spell; some sort of temporary madness. Now, I see that you are still aroused by him. It is disgusting. You have learnt nothing.”

“It was just a reaction, father; it meant nothing, it...”

“It was a reaction induced by Potter, Draco – do not attempt to tell me that I cannot interpret the meaning of that.”

Draco searches wildly for a way of placating his father. He feels dreadfully exposed in his thin robes and he does not want to be naked again. He can see no way of this situation ending well, as it is, and he stares into his father's eyes. Concentrating on him, he tries to figure a way of charming his way out of it – as he does Snape, when homework is due; as he has McGonagall, when she used to catch him in the Prefect's bathroom before his time. Lucius is a proud man; a difficult one, one who approves only of the most delicate flattery. Flattery is the key, though, to his heart; a skilled wordsmith could have no better recipient than Lucius Malfoy. Draco is not old enough to have acquired the knack but he has seen it in his mother, who he thinks probably won Lucius through a mysterious and beautiful web of verbal intrigue. How to flatter, though? There is no way but a dangerous one – a one seeped in awkward territory. Draco is lucky that Lucius encouraged his son to worship his father. Otherwise the words might not leave his mouth. Suspended on the edge of a verbal cliff, though, they leave his lips easily and flow just as genuine sentiment ought to.

“It was not him. It was...your voice. Your words. Your meaning. That was what caused the reaction, not Potter.” It is tenuous, but it is honeyed, and Draco thinks he may be in with a chance of getting away with it. “It was your _power_.”

Lucius' eyes take on a sudden gleam and Draco knows that he has won. _What_ he has won, however, remains unclear. Unclear, at least, until Lucius breaks towards him.

Lucius has long be pleasured by being a Death Eater. It is the power it gives him; the green aura, the booming voice, the identity as one of Voldemort's few. It is as though he does not need a wand, sometimes – that magic flows from his very fingertips, biting and warm, poisonous. It is everything about courage that he aspires to but does not actually possess; it is the pretence of bravery, the pretense of power and prestige. It is frailty hidden within a skull-mask. It is pale blood hiding within scarlet bravado. If Lucius weren't a Death Eater, he would be nothing; a fragile rich noble, if that. And yet there is not enough of this power to go around. The dullness of the routine is nothing compared with the splendour of a _mors mordre_ night – and there has not been one of those, now, for quite a long time. He has not seen the fear in someone's eyes the way he sees it in Draco's just now. He has not seen such a shivering monument of awe for too long. It is water to a thirsty man and he drinks it – drinks in Draco's regard for him, his respect and wonder. It illuminates him grassgreen. 

“Oh, Draco,” he says, voice a silky purr. “That's very, very interesting.” 

Draco agrees, very pleased with himself, backed up against the bed frame but confident of escape. It is then, as Lucius steps slowly towards him, that he realises he cannot move his hands. They shove against thick, wound rope.

“How have you-?”

“Draco, please,” Lucius purrs. “If you haven't learnt this little trick by now, I'd question what you're doing in school.”

Draco has no reply to this; he is too terrified to form words. His plan has backfired spectacularly and he doesn't know how to get out of it – all he knows is that punishment is no longer on his father's mind. There is a slightly deranged look there that he knows cannot be good. The advance brings forth heat and the faint smell of aftershave; a scent Draco remembers for its distance, it's signature on the man he so desperately wants to become. Despite the fear and the restriction, there is arousal within him that he cannot quite place. 

“Father-”

“Yes, Draco?” Lucius' eyes gleam cold water at him, mesmerizing and brilliant. In that instant Draco knows that he has no choice. His father's pupils are like black snakes in those eyes, a call to battle where the opponents are unequal and the path clear. Perhaps it will help him to become the man he aspires to be. Perhaps he should consider it an honour, that his father deems to help him in this way, perhaps -

He begins to reply, “nothing” when his father's hand slips his robe apart and he wants to say other things instead. His lips flatten the silent 'no' as his skin illuminates the room, endlessly pale. Long legs are tree trunks amongst the grasses of black fabric; appropriate for the sole branch that sticks out in the middle. Draco is painfully erect and painfully embarrassed, blushing red with the futility of his position. No matter what he does, he cannot will the need away and it is because he doesn't understand his desires that he worsens them. It is no longer merely Potter occupying his thoughts but the cold thrill of humiliation and verbal sparring. It is the taste of inevitable failure at the hands of the person he loves most – has always loved most. It is the hand he has wanted to touch him, perhaps before, always, unknowing. In the dim light of the room, it begins not to feel wrong and Draco swallows hard. 

“My power, indeed?” Lucius is saying. “Perhaps...perhaps. In any case, you do not know what true power is. You have been dirtied and I am merciful; I can restore you. I can cleanse you. I can teach you things you have no understanding of – I can brew fear in you, bleed awe, can I not? This is power, Draco. You shall feel it and know it and one day, perhaps own it. I want you to be sorry for what you've done. I want you to feel purity and reject sin. I want you to see truths only I can tell you.” His hand slides down Draco's panting chest. It is warm at the palm with cold fingers. Blood throbs in Lucius' wrist and Draco can feel it, just on his groin. He wheezes out breath and fights his hips still. 

“Are you going to touch me, father?” It is just adoring enough, Draco thinks, to see itself successful. He doubts that Lucius takes suggestions but he needs this; the way only someone with prolonged arousal and little reason can need anything. He needs _a_ hand, but Lucius' will be best, somehow – knowing, touch, experienced, a mile away from Draco's spindly little fingers. And it is best, certainly _best_ , as he spreads it like a spider along Draco's hip and touches the head of his cock with a small self-satisfied noise. It aches like a sudden fire and Draco leaps forward with a cry – like flattery, he figures, it will not be punished. Lucius smirks and curves his hand in on his son's cock, offering a few delicate strokes with smug satisfaction.

“How does it feel, Draco?” He murmurs, watching the clouds descend over his son's gaze as if under Imperius. It has already gone too far, he knows, but he is so disinclined to care that it will frighten him later. The fear and the power are intoxicating drugs and he has followed them without caution, without measure – they are the owner of him. With every flicker of Draco's awed gaze he falls further into a cauldron of need. So many people have snubbed and doubted him. So many have seen him lower his wand in cowardice, declined to get his hands dirty. So many have suspected his disloyalty. So many have seen a man afraid to get blood on his robes. So many times, he has just followed orders, too afraid to betray what is wrong for what is right. Draco is subservient the way Narcissa was, once; pale and impressed by him, glowing in his candlelight. She knows him too well, now, where Draco does not. Draco sees courage not cowardice; strength not fear. He sees Lucius the way Lucius wants to be seen and in a world of deprivation Lucius can only take hold of that adulation and throttle it in his pleasured, selfish embrace. His hand is painfully quick, now, and with these words, this, “I will take hold of you and choke you with this, Draco – this love, this desire, this _need_ for me,” Draco comes all over his parted robes. It is then, in the moment of vulnerability and doe-eyed relaxation that Lucius feels his own hunger. It cannot, will not, end here. Without words, he waves the wards away and pushes Draco down onto the bed.

“Far too soon,” he stutters, turning Draco over and ignoring his moan of surprise. “That was – far too soon, Draco; I should have expected, after the scene downstairs...” There is the huffing sound of breath against the silk upholstery; the faint scratching of skinny limbs on the covers. Draco is scrabbling and unsure, weak with pleasure but afraid, still, of what lies ahead. Lucius can barely give a thought to it – if he were to do so, he'd loathe himself more than he already does. He is chasing adoration he does not deserve and it is like stealing; the euphoria is enough to cloud the mind's morality. “You shall satisfy me before the night is out. Do you understand?”

The night suddenly clearer, Draco doesn't know how to respond to this. He doesn't know how to feel; his brain curls effortlessly around it, empty and mesmerized. He feels positively bewitched and there is no room for logic in it. All he knows is that a part of him he's never known wants this; wants to feel something other than cold contempt, to feel needed and punished and adored and cleansed. He cares for nothing but that splayed palm on his back as he rears up against it and Lucius' hands gather on his hipbones. His body feels a frail willow wand as his head tips back; from the buttery crown of his head to the slender curve of his spine. He arches as he breathes in fire. Lucius is above him, over him; he can feel the stronger body leaning down upon his back. There are strong arms and shoulders a mile wide; body heat so radiant he fears it will burn. There are thighs pressing against him that defy any movement of his. Reaching back, there is heat and movement that he knows it is wrong to want to touch. His hands are shaking on the bed so he pushes back and touches the only way that he can. Lucius makes a strangled sound he disguises well. 

“You want this, do you?” His voice is warmer, uncharacteristic. Draco thinks he likes it.

“Yes,” he says, in a whisper.

“You think this is purer, do you? Than Potter – than a dirty little Gryffindor? Is this pure, Draco? Is this right?”

“It's...” Draco hopes that his father isn't talking about morality. He is wriggling back with some regularity, now, enjoying the tingling sense of pleasure elsewhere given. Lucius' hand settles in the small of his back and holds him still, still enough to answer the question. His other hand is undoing his own robes. “It's pure to me, father.” 

“Is it, now?” The shushing sound of fabric falling to the bed occupies the silence. When Lucius comes forward, the heat intensifies and Draco feels his cock for the first time; wet-tipped, hot, needy. He finds it difficult not to feel a bizarre sense of pride, even as his father adds:

“I'm not sure why I should take your word for it.”

“I'm not worthy of it, father.”

“More than that, Draco,” Lucius hand skirts over Draco's lower back and disappears, returns wet and bitterly cold. His fingers are briskly functional as he talks; his actions and his words as degrading as one another. Draco gasps around stretches and flexes his body with them, responsive to sensations of pain and pleasure alike. “Your opinion of purity might well be useful to a host of farmyard pigs but it is of no use to me. You talk of the purity of this – I know what purity is to you, and purity is _him_. Purity is those selfish, disgusting acts you perform for him in the Gryffindor Tower and goodness knows where else – the acts that shame this family, and me. How can I-” He slaps one hand down hard on Draco's left buttock to stop him wriggling. “How can I put any value in what you judge to be sacred?”

“I love you, father.” Draco whimpers. It is said genuinely, so reverently that it is almost pitiful and Lucius takes check of his words. Though he has doubted everything else in his life he has never doubted this; that he has raised a son who loves him unconditionally. No matter how vicious or lengthy the family punishments have been on him; no matter how hefty the title of Malfoy sits on him, Draco has always loved Lucius. Lucius eases a soothing hand over the small red mark.

“You have never said the same to him?”

“I don't _feel_ the same for him. It was a mistake.”

“This isn't a mistake.”

“No, father.”

“You know what I will do to you, Draco, if I find it has happened again?” Lucius' index finger crooks inwards and the pleasure is fitting for the cruelty of the threat. Draco knows. He cries out that he knows, moves twice more because it's too good not to _need_ ; like licking sugar from your fingers. 

“I can hurt you, Draco,” Lucius continues and Draco finds that he knows that, too. “I can hurt you and make you wish you'd never dared breathe around that boy.” Draco nods, nods incessantly and Lucius feels so powerful in that moment, so rich in prophecy and might that he cannot resist any longer and pulls Draco's hips back against him. There is a throaty noise then that could be either of them and so Lucius stills, as much for himself as for Draco – and waits until the breathing holds fewer sobs. Everything is very tight and very black; a whole new world past a moral barrier Lucius has never permitted himself to break. He feels very free. Free and boundless. And _powerful_. Draco's head raises and he chokes out a small sound; “More.”

Lucius doesn't know why he wants it; doesn't know why any of this is happening, really, but he cannot turn down the request and eases his way to the hilt, breath ragged and overwhelmed. He remembers a moment some years ago with Narcissa – but it is a candlelit memory compared to this. Draco is crying out without intermissions as Lucius movements turn smooth and regular. They quicken as he leans over his son's back, hair spilling over into the crevices in his ribs. His hands move and capture Draco's, holding him down and putting him in contact with his neck, his ears, his hair. In his ear he whispers. One hand then flutters to his hair, and yanks for better range. 

“More, Draco? Faster – harder?”

“Father, please, _please_ -”

“Does it feel good?”

“Yes – God, yes.”

“Is this what you want, most in the world, Draco?”

“I want you, father.”

“Do you deserve me?”

“N-no -”

“Am I not merciful?”

“Yes, father. _Please_ , father.”

“Never again, Draco. I never want that boy... you are mine. Do you understand? Do you understand me? This is what is pure. I am who you should fear, and love. Never forget that I am powerful and that you, you will be powerful, too. This is what it is to be a Malfoy. This is what it is to be us – to live as we do. This is purity. This is beautiful. This – is not what you deserve, but this is mercy. Do you understand me?” Lucius' can sense the inevitable as much as Draco can; his words are punctuated with quickened jerks. Draco is keening along with them, nodding on the fullstops, his shoulders barely supporting the movement.

“I am yours. I am yours, father, _please_ , faster – I need this, please.”

Lucius' hand moves around to Draco's cock and gives it a series of strokes that are almost nastily greedy. “Come for me, Draco,” he says. “Be a good boy.”

Tight as a bowstring, with his head wrenched back into his father's hands and his joints threatening collapse, Draco wrenches his whole body forward into a world where everything is white, and hot, and silent. Sparks rain down inside his eyelids as his mouth opens, his skin on fire and his every limb locked. His hands sob under his father's. There is a scream that folds itself into the canopy and dies there; dies in the fabric prison of something sinful – sinful and true. Power surges in Lucius' veins at the sound and their spell is sewn up; he comes hot and raggedly with small thrusts, nails embedding into Draco's palms. He says nothing but bites down hard upon his son's shoulder almost as if to testify the act – no magic would do, no words and no emotions; only the rawest stripe put on this piece of meat.

Draco collapses like a stone in water and whispers prayerful words of thankfulness. Lucius turns onto his back and thinks of redemption. The words have always been on his lips as the bodies have crumpled before him. Just as then, the words are spoken only in the mind. As Draco curls into his side, he stops mid-sentence, still.


End file.
